The foreign ministries of China and India agreed in a joint statement on Friday that their troops must quickly disengage from a months-long standoff at their long-disputed Himalayan border.

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar met on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation foreign ministers' meeting in Moscow to try and end the dispute, the most serious in decades at the undemarcated border.

"The two Foreign Ministers agreed that the current situation in the border areas is not in the interest of either side. They agreed therefore that the border troops of both sides should continue their dialogue, quickly disengage, maintain proper distance and ease tensions," the statement said.

Separately, China's foreign ministry said it would maintain communications with India through diplomatic and military channels and commit to "restoring peace and tranquillity" in the disputed border area.

Elaborating on the Moscow meeting, China said Wang had told Jaishankar that the "imperative is to immediately stop provocations such as firing and other dangerous actions that violate the commitments made by the two sides".

All personnel and equipment that have trespassed at the border must be moved and frontier troops on both sides "must quickly disengage" in order to de-escalate the situation, Wang added.

"This deal is significant but on the other hand I am still cautious. Let's wait and see what transpires in the next few weeks and months. That will be the crucial test," said Sumit Ganguly, a professor of political science at Indiana University in Bloomington, the United States.

"I think both sides have considerable reasons to de-escalate," he told Al Jazeera.

"In the case of India, the economy has cratered in the wake of the COVID crisis and the shambolic handling thereof. And consequently India can ill afford to devote significant resources to the military at this particular juncture," he said.

"The Chinese did not want it to become a major distraction as their economy is finally recovering, and they are focused on the November elections in the US."

Speaking on the five-point agreement between the two countries, Ganguly said they would probably involve withdrawing troops from eyeball-to-eyeball contact with one another.

"They would involve reducing certain kinds of actual deployment of artillery and other weaponry along particular band of territory."

'State of puffing'

The Global Times, a tabloid controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, took a more strident tone in an editorial published ahead of the two ministers' meeting.

"The Chinese side must be fully prepared to take military action when diplomatic engagement fails, and its front-line troops must be able to respond to emergencies, and be ready to fight at any time," the paper said.

It accused India of holding a grudge over the 1962 conflict, and described the country as in "an unprecedented state of puffing".

Wang and Jaishanka's meeting took place after a border clash earlier this week when each accused the other of firing in the air during a confrontation on their border in the western Himalayas, a violation of long-held protocols on the use of firearms on the sensitive frontier.

The Chinese ministry said the two countries reached a five-point consensus on reducing tension in the area including the need to abide by existing agreements to ensure peace.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

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